Nikos Kazantzakis: Zorba The Greek

He waved his big fist in the air.

"Right!" he said. "That's another matter. Let's come back to our business. Do I stay, or do I go? Decide."

"Zorba," I said, and I had to restrain myself forcibly from throwing myself into his arms, "it's agreed'. You come with me. I have some lignite in Crete. You can superintend the workmen. In the evening we'll stretch out on the sand-in this world, I have neither wife, children nor dogs-we'll eat and drink together. Then you'll play the santuri."

"If I'm in the mood, d'you hear? If I'm in the mood. I'll work for you as much as you like. I'm your man there. But the santuri, that's different. It's a wild animal, it needs freedom. If I'm in the mood, I'll play. I'll even sing. And I'll dance the Zéimbékiko [4]the Hassápiko, [5]the Pentozáli [6]-but, I tell you plainly from the start, I must be in the mood. Let's have that quite clear. If you force me to, it'll be finished. As regards those things, you must realize, I'm a man."

"A man? What d'you mean?"

"Well, free!"

I called for another rum.

"Make it two!" Zorba cried. "You're going to have one, so that we can drink to it. Sage and rum don't go very well together. You're going to drink a rum, too, so that our agreement holds good."

We clinked our little glasses. Now it was really daylight. The ship was blowing its siren. The lighterman who had taken my cases on board signalled to me.

"May God be with us," I said as I rose. "Let's go!"

"God and the devil!" Zorba added calmly.

He leaned over, put the santuri under his arm, opened the door, and went out first.

THE SEA, autumn mildness, islands bathed in light, fine rain spreading a diaphanous veil over the immortal nakedness of Greece. Happy is the man, I thought, who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean Sea.

Many are the joys of this world-women, fruit, ideas. But to cleave that sea in the gentle autumnal season, murmuring the name of each islet, is to my mind the joy most apt to transport the heart of man into paradise. Nowhere else can one pass so easily and serenely from reality to dream. The frontiers dwindle, and from the masts of the most ancient ships spring branches and fruits. It is as if here in Greece necessity is the mother of miracles.

Towards noon the rain stopped. The sun parted the clouds and appeared gentle, tender, washed and fresh, and it caressed with its rays the beloved waters and lands. I stood at the prow and let myself be intoxicated with the miracle which was revealed as far as eye could see.

On the ship were Greeks, cunning devils with rapacious eyes, brains like the trumpery goods of bazaar dealers, wire pulling and quarrelling; an untuned piano; honest and venomous shrews. One's first impulse was to seize the ship by both ends, plunge it into the sea, shake it thoroughly to make all the livestock which polluted it drop off-men, rats, bugs-and then refloat it, freshly washed and empty.

But at times I was seized with compassion. A Buddhist compassion, as cold as the conclusion of a metaphysical syllogism. A compassion not only for men but for all life which struggles, cries, weeps, hopes and does not perceive that everything is a phantasmagoria of nothingness. Compassion for the Greeks, and for the ligníte mine, and for my unfinished manuscript of Buddha, for all those vain compositions of light and shade which suddenly disturb and contamínate the pure air.

I looked at Zorba's drawn and waxen face. He was sitting on a coil of ropes in the bows. He was sniffing at a lemon and listening with his great ears to some passengers quarrelling about the king and others about Venizelos. He was shaking his head and spitting.

"Old junk!" he murmured disdainfully. "Aren't they ashamed of themselves!"

"What do you mean by old junk, Zorba?"

"Why, all these-kings, democracies, plebiscites, deputies, fiddle-faddle!"

Zorba had got so far beyond contemporary events that they had already ceased to be anything but out-of-date rubbish. Certainly, to him telegraphy, steamships and engines, current morality and religion must have appeared like rusty old rifles. His mind progressed much faster than the world.

The ropes were creaking on the masts, the coastlines were dancing, and the women on board had become yellower than a lemon. They had laid down their weapons-paint, bodices, hairpins, combs. Their lips had paled, their nails were turning blue. The old magpie scolds were losing their borrowed plumes-ribbons, false eyebrows and beauty spots, brassières-and to see them on the point of vomiting, you felt disgust and a great compassíon.

Zorba was also turning yellow and green. His sparkling eyes were dulled. It was only towards the evening that his eyes brightened again. He pointed out two dolphins, leaping through the water alongside the ship.

"Dolphíns!" he exclaimed joyously.

I noticed for the first time that almost half of the index finger on his left hand was missing. I started and felt sick.

"What happened to your finger, Zorba?" I cried.

"Nothing," he replied, offended that I had not shown more delight in the dolphins.

"Did you get it caught in a machine?" I insisted.

"What ever are you going on about machines for? I cut it off myself."

"Yourself? Why?"

"You can't understand, boss!" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I told you I had been in every trade. Once I was a potter. I was mad about that craft. D'you realize what it means to take a lump of mud and make what you will out of it? Ffrr! You turn the wheel and the mud whirls round, as if it were possessed while you stand over it and say: I'm going to make a jug, I'm going to make a plate, I'm going to make a lamp and the devil knows what more! That's what you might call being a man: freedom!"

He had forgotten the sea, he was no longer biting the lemon, his eyes had become clear again.

"Well?" I asked. "What about your finger?"

"Oh, it got in my way in the wheel. It always got plumb in the middle of things and upset my plans. So one day I seized a hatchet…"

"Didn't it hurt you?"

"What d'you mean? I'm not a tree trunk. I'm a man. Of course it hurt me. But it got in my way at the wheel, so I cut it off."

The sun went down and the sea became calmer. The clouds dispersed. The evening star shone, I looked at the sea, I looked at the sky and began to reflect… To love like that, to take the hatchet and chop and feel the pain… But I hid my emotion.

"A bad system that, Zorba!" I said, smiling. "It reminds me of the ascetic who, according to the Golden Legend, once saw a woman who disturbed him physically, so he took an axe…"

"The devil he didn't!" Zorba interposed, guessing what I was going to say. "Cut that off! To hell with the fool! The poor benighted innocent, that's never an obstacle!"

"But," I insisted, "it can be a very great obstacle!"

"To what?"

"To your entry into the kingdom of heaven."

Zorba glanced sideways at me, with a mocking air, and said: "But, you fool, that is the key to paradise!"

He raised his head, looked at me closely, as if he wanted to see what was going on in my mind: future lives, the kingdom of heaven, women, priests. But he did not seem to be able to gather much. He shook his great grey head guardedly.

"The maimed don't get into paradise," he said, and then fell silent.

I went to lie down in my cabin and took a book. Buddha was still engaging my thoughts. I read The Dialogue of Buddha and the Shepherd which had filled my mind for some years with peace and security.

The Shepherd: My meal is ready, I have milked my ewes. The door of my hut is holted, my fire is alight. And you, sky, can rain as much as you please!

Buddha: I no longer need food or milk. The winds are my shelter, my fire is out. And you, sky, can rain as much as you please!